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Life After FI

I har­bor a secret addic­tion to Broad­way musi­cals. I mean, the entire rea­son I’m going to Lon­don in Octo­ber is to see the Har­ry Pot­ter play in West End. (It’s going to be awe­some and no, I haven’t read the book yet. It’s been tough to resist so far!)

Any­ways, one of my favorite Broad­way musi­cals is a lit­tle num­ber known as Avenue Q. It’s loose­ly based on Sesame Street except with major adult themes. And Gary Cole­man. Can’t for­get him. #rip

Got­ta find out, don’t wan­na wait Got to make sure that my life will be great Got­ta find my pur­pose Before it’s too late

Unlike him, I know what my pur­pose in life is. My prob­lem is get­ting there in a time­ly man­ner.

OurNextLife had a won­der­ful post back in Jan­u­ary on Defin­ing Your Pur­pose, which I thought was just fab­u­lous and artic­u­lat­ed many of the things I wish I knew how to say. Yes­ter­day, she released a fol­low up post about their Retire­ment Deal­break­ers. In these two posts, she maps out their goals and activ­i­ties into 3 cat­e­gories and over­laps them into a Venn Dia­gram. It’s real­ly neat to see it all laid out like that, and I was inspired to make my own dia­gram.

The three themes I came up with are Adven­ture, Cre­ativ­i­ty, and Soci­ety. For cre­ativ­i­ty, I’d like to learn more about how to do crafty/handy things; things like learn­ing more about DIY skills or pot­tery, wood­work­ing, and maybe even some paint­ing. This can segue into adven­ture by trav­el­ing to learn new skills or hone exist­ing ones. Maybe spend­ing some time in Italy learn­ing the secrets of stained glass. Maybe trav­el­ing around the Com­ic Con scene and have a booth to sell my fan­cy art pieces.

I could also give back to soci­ety with my cre­ative­ness, like fix­ing up the homes of low-income peo­ple or hav­ing beau­ti­ful home­made fur­ni­ture to sell to peo­ple to use. I made soci­ety some­what of a gen­er­al term because what I am think­ing of doing encom­pass­es such a range of activ­i­ties. To me, soci­ety includes things like Big Broth­ers, Big Sis­ters where I could have more of a spe­cif­ic impact on one per­son­’s life. It includes work­ing at a sum­mer camp to have more of a gen­er­al impact on lots of young peo­ple’s lives.

It could even include spend­ing more time with friends and fam­i­ly. I have such a wide net of peo­ple, I could spend a fair amount of time trav­el­ing around to vis­it my far-flung net­work. This is where the adven­ture comes in. Maybe I’ll spend a year in an RV trav­el­ing around the US. Maybe I’ll embark on a round the world trip.

I came up with a few sce­nar­ios based on the above themes. Keep in mind, these sce­nar­ios are based on the premise that I’ll still be sin­gle and able to do what­ev­er I want, when I want.

Me look­ing cool in my mil­i­tary days dri­ving a 5 ton truck.

Scenario 1:

End my work­ing career a few years ear­ly and take advan­tage of the 4 years of tuition left over from my time in the mil­i­tary. I’d prob­a­bly get an MFA (Mas­ters in Fine Arts) in some medi­um I’d be inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about. One prob­lem with this is I’d have to go back to my home state, and high­er edu­ca­tion there is in dire straits. I’m not even sure the uni­ver­si­ties will be around when I get ready to use my ben­e­fits. Anoth­er poten­tial issue would be tim­ing. I’m not sure my ben­e­fits will last long enough for me to use them. I’ve already been out a year, and I’m not sure how long they’ll last now that I’m out. I should prob­a­bly get that fig­ured out soon­er than lat­er.…

This sce­nario plays into the cre­ative aspect the most, since I’d be going back to school specif­i­cal­ly to learn more about art. Although I assume I’d have the breaks off to either trav­el or hang out with family/friends wher­ev­er they may be, so then I could work in the adven­ture and soci­ety themes too.

Scenario 2:

The best sum­mer of my life was the sum­mer I spent out at the local Girl Scout camp as a life­guard. I spent 9 years there as a camper and rel­ished the chance to be a role mod­el and men­tor to the next gen­er­a­tion of girls. Grow­ing up, my coun­selors had a huge impact on my life and I would­n’t be who I am today with­out them. Now that I’m old­er, I’d like to be an even bet­ter role mod­el than my 17-year-old self was. So my plan would rough­ly look some­thing like work at the camp dur­ing the sum­mer (food and liv­ing space tak­en care of with a small wage com­ing in), trav­el dur­ing the spring/fall or spend some time with fam­i­ly or both, and then dur­ing the win­ter get a part-time job doing some­thing fun. Like work­ing at a ski resort. Then I’d even get to ski for free! (or a heav­i­ly dis­count­ed rate).

This sce­nario would best play into the soci­ety and adven­ture themes, although with camp life there are plen­ty of ways to express cre­ativ­i­ty. I made lan­yards, leather prod­ucts, paint­ed murals and thought up ways to keep the mag­ic of camp alive and well. Obvi­ous­ly, soci­ety would be the major theme in this sce­nario, since I’d be get­ting to work with kids all sum­mer long and work­ing with soci­ety for the win­ter. I’d get the adven­ture in too with trav­el in the off-sea­son.

Scenario 3:

Meet an incred­i­bly attrac­tive, smart, nerdy for­eign guy and move over­seas to be with him. I’d leave my sav­ings alone and let them grow while I lived a “nor­mal” life. One where we do what­ev­er we want and don’t wor­ry too much about sav­ings rates, max­ing out all our retire­ment accounts, or find­ing all the loop­holes to pay as lit­tle tax as pos­si­ble. By the time I reached “tra­di­tion­al” retire­ment age, my sav­ings would grow to a nice lump sum and we’d be all set for the rest of our lives. Of course, this an entire­ly hypo­thet­i­cal sce­nario. Total­ly imag­i­nary. Things like this only hap­pen in cheesy rom coms or steamy books. shuf­fles feet, clears throat. Right? Right.

This sce­nario real­ly caters to the adven­ture side of me. What could be more adven­ture­some than sell­ing all (ok most) of my stuff and mov­ing to a new life over­seas!?! I’m sure my cre­ativ­i­ty would­n’t stop over­seas, and I’m also sure I’d find ways to incor­po­rate soci­ety in there as well. Just as soon as I learn one or two new lan­guages so I can talk to peo­ple 🙂

Ide­al­ly, my life after FI would encom­pass some­thing from each sce­nario involv­ing all three themes. Then, I would be tru­ly ful­filled.

What ele­ments does your ide­al life after FI include? What do you want to do after reach­ing FI?

My ide­al FI life has changed so much since I start­ed on the path to FI. I want sim­i­lar things to you and also day­dream about the inter­na­tion­al care­free life. Right now though, it’s the white pick­et fence in my home­town near my fam­i­ly and friends that is draw­ing me in but that might just be because I’m liv­ing on the oppo­site side of the coun­try as them right now and I miss them! (Also, home own­er­ship is not in the rec­om­mend­ed FI plan for most FI blog­gers but it’s a goal of mine — I just hope we do it bet­ter than the first time around! Our house we’re sell­ing in Col­orado is set to close next week! Woot Woot!)

I TOTALLY think about this top­ic all the time. In real­i­ty, a lot of peo­ple say that the best way to moti­vate your­self for finan­cial free­dom is to make con­crete plans for what you’re going to do once you get there.

My plan is to real­ly take this whole finan­cial coach­ing thing to the next lev­el, beyond the blog­ging and ebooks I’m writ­ing now. I’d like to do more one on one and speak­ing engage­ments; and the best part is that I’d like to do it all for lit­tle or no cost. That’s one of the beau­ties of being FI — I won’t need the mon­ey, and so I can do it just because I gen­uine­ly want to help oth­ers!

I like sce­nario 1 of going back to school. I’ve often thought I would go back to school and mas­ter my gui­tar skills. Why not? It sounds like fun!